


Shipping Manifest

by jenna_thorn



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is that legal?” Benji asked the room in general. Ethan shrugged, Jane rolled her eyes, Will raised one hand and waggled it sideways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shipping Manifest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AstridV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridV/gifts).



Benji leaned over Will’s shoulder and blinked at the screen. “You’ve got eight ids open.”

“Yep.”

“And they’re all different US agencies.” Will alt-tabbed twice and Benji corrected himself. “Plus UK.” Will alt-tabbed again. “Israel?”

“Interdepartmental cooperation,” Will said to the file at his left hand.

“Is that legal?” Benji asked the room in general. Ethan shrugged, Jane rolled her eyes, Will raised one hand and waggled it sideways.

\--:: --

Benji looked up when Will's phone rang. The letters on the monitor were starting to dance, anyway. “Brandt, BIS, Office of Export Enforcement,” Will said into the phone and Benji blinked. US Agency acronyms always sounded vaguely off, but using BS in close proximity as an agency name was going to tip off someone, somewhere.

Benji rubbed his eyes, then deliberately blinked to keep from rubbing them again. “Just us?” he asked as Will set the phone back down.

Will tilted his head. “It’s two in the morning.” Benji nodded at him and Will sighed. “Ethan’s at the gym, Jane said something about sleep.” He glanced out the window, though the heavy curtains hid any view. “Possibly sleet.”

“Good thing we don’t need them for the heavy lifting, eh?” Benji pressed his hands together, the familiar snap of his knuckles popping like a good luck charm. Will grinned wolfishly across the hotel table at him.

\--::--

“Have you two even moved?”

Benji looked up at Ethan and blinked at the change in focus length, then said the first thing he thought of. “Wow, I really have to pee.”

Will snickered as he walked away quickly and Ethan took Benji’s chair.  
“So, what progress?”

“Do you actually want details?”

Ethan paused, then shook his head. “No, just timeline and destination.”

“Too many variables. I’m piecing together audit trails and tracing shipments, Benji’s cracking the communication system, but we’re swimming upstream toward …”

Ethan nodded. They’d all seen the preliminary file, the lab data, could all imagine the sheer destruction if these tanks made it to the black market. “Do we have a region?”

Benji reentered the room. “Every node leads to somewhere else. I’ve bounced from Algiers to Prague by way of Indiana. Welcome to the cloud.”

Ethan opened and closed his empty hands. “Bored with the gym?” Will asked. “I promise at some point, I’ll find you something to fall off of."

“Hey! I’m trying to help.”

“I beg your pardon, to leap off of.”

“I also hit people.” 

“Can you make a sandwich?”

“Yeah, I can do that. Catering it is.”

\--::--

Ethan returned, laden with plastic bags, and a six pack of water bottles balanced precariously in his arms. Jane swept away the empty cans on Benji’s side of the table, then set a clamshell takeout box in front of Will. She rubbed her thumb along the back of his neck and down from his ear and his fingers stilled on the keyboard. “I…didn’t realize I had a headache,” he said, surprise in his voice.

She tugged at his shoulder. “Up. Walk.” He stood, leaned over the chair and hit a few more keys, then stretched toward the ceiling, pulling free what little of his shirt was still tucked. His shirt tails sagged as he folded himself in half to push his fingertips against the floor. She tapped the upper edge of Benji’s laptop. “Up, you too. Pushups, something.”

“Pastry!” Benji protested.

“Pushup, then pastry, “ she countered.

Brandt snickered as he settled back in his chair and squinted at the screen. 

“Headache still?" Ethan asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Will answered.

Ethan dropped one hand to Will’s shoulder and froze as Will stiffened. He slowly dragged his other hand around Will’s collarbone, caught his jaw in the crook of his elbow, then lifted, slowly and carefully. All the while, Will kept his hands steady on the table before him, one to each side of the laptop. 

“It’s the universe’s slowest trust fall,” Jane whispered, as she handed Benji half an éclair.

Will shot them both a dark look, but held himself still, deliberately relaxed. With a slow breath out and an audible squeak, the tension in his neck yielded, letting go of hours of peering at subpeona’d shipping invoices and the minutia of research.

Ethan backed away and Will stretched, looking left at the heavy drapes hiding them from the world, right to where Benji stood, chocolate smeared over his lower lip and his shirt pulled up where he was rubbing at his lower back, and up at the ceiling, all accompanied by a series of pops.

“I’ve broken necks more quietly than that,” Ethan said.

“I know,” Will replied, and faced the monitor. “Benji needs protein.”

“Bossy bossy,” Benji said, but he opened his mouth for Jane to poke a piece of chicken in it.

“Wanna trade? I’m filtering shipments though Brighton now. You ready for another OCR search?”

Benji mumbled something and Ethan leaned over Will’s shoulder. “Itty bitty numbers.”

“And lots of them,” Will responded.

“You know,” Ethan said, “we have analysts for this.” Will turned in the chair to glare up and back at him. Ethan grinned and backed away, his hands in the air in mock surrender. “I’m going to go do ...something useful.”

“Don’t need anyone beat up. Yet,” Will said.

Jane tilted her head to the side. “I thought it was his turn for seduction.”

“I can teach you how to run an OCR search, you know,” Benji said, and she fled.

\--::--

Jane leaned against the wall. Benji had migrated to the floor and lay on his back with a laptop tilted on his knees and another next to him, one hand on each, cables tying him like Gulliver. Will still sat at the hotel table, but he’d finally lost his tie entirely, and was writing incongruously on the little pad of hotel stationary with an expensive looking silver pen.

“That's not a language I know. Not even an alphabet I know. Code?” she asked.

“Some of it. Shorthand with personal mods.”

“My mom used to do that.”

Benji said from the floor, “Did you just make a your mom joke?” She glared, hands on her hips, and he grinned back at her. “Besides, don’t encourage his tree-killing ways.”

“Delete doesn’t delete,” Will said with a singsong tone clearly born of repetition.

“Dead tree burning.” Benji replied.

“Burn and scatter?” she asked. “Even though no one else can read it anyway?”

“Someone on this team has to be cautious,” he said, still looking at his monitor. “Benji, pull those, yeah?” He hit a key, then leaned back in the chair. “Hunt still lurking in doorways?”

“Refreshing his international undercover contacts.”

“Lurking in doorways,” he repeated and she shrugged.

“Bingo, yahztee, goooooooaaaaalllll.” Benji hastily scattered the blanket of tech. “We’ve got a match.”

“We’ve got a location,” Will said and he slung his discarded tie around his neck.

Jane grinned as she slipped on her shoes. “We’ve got somebody for Ethan to hit.”

“Oh, it’s Singapore,” Benji said. “Lots of buildings for him to jump off of, too.” Will laughed as he pulled out his phone.

**Author's Note:**

> the prompt AstridV encouraged was: There should be more Brandt / Dunn while staring at computers to catch the bad guys as Jane stands guard and Ethan is reduced to supplying them coffee and occasional meals.


End file.
